The Tampa Bay Rays, who are taking on the Texas Rangers in the American League Division Series this week, have already claimed a postseason title. The team lists 12 coaches on its staff—one of the highest numbers in baseball and the most for any team in the playoffs.

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Pitching coach Jim Hickey
Getty Images

In addition to manager Joe Maddon, the Rays have a hitting coach, a pitching coach, first-base and third-base coaches, a bench coach, a bullpen coach, a bullpen catcher, two special assistants and two "general" coaches. "We've got assistants for everything now," said Rays coach Don Zimmer. "We've got a pitching coach and an assistant to the pitching coach. We have a bullpen coach and an assistant to the bullpen coach."

When asked what former Rays outfielder Rocco Baldelli, who is now a special assistant, does for the club, Zimmer sounded confused. "I haven't seen Rocco Baldelli this season," he said. (Baldelli scouts players and assists the team during spring training, Maddon said.)

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Third-base coach Tom Foley
Cal Sport Media/Zuma Press

The Rays might be an extreme example, but they seem to be at the forefront of a larger movement afoot in baseball to pack the dugout with as many authority figures as possible. For the majority of the season, there were more than 250 coaches across the sport, including managers. Each team had at least seven listed on its website and most had eight.

Baseball rules only allow a manager and six coaches to be in the dugout except for September, when teams are allowed to add a seventh. But there's no prohibition on the number who can travel with the team, work with the players before games or hang out in the clubhouse. Among postseason teams, the Arizona Diamondbacks aren't far behind the Rays with 10 coaches, the Rangers and Milwaukee Brewers have nine while the New York Yankees, Detroit Tigers, Philadelphia Phillies and St. Louis Cardinals have eight.

Stuart Sternberg, the Rays principal owner, has overseen the expansion of the team's coaching staff since taking control in 2005. He said he got the idea from other sports. "You look at basketball and they have 12 players and a whole bunch of coaches," he said before Game 3 Monday. "Here you have 25 guys so it seems to make sense that you would have more coaches." Whenever the team's brass sees something it thinks it can use, he added, "we steal it."

Historians say the first baseball coaches had a pretty simple job: They stood near first or third base taunting the opposing pitcher with the worst expletives they could think of. Other times they'd pretend to break for home in hopes of drawing a throw to the plate (this was made illegal in 1904). Base coaching didn't become an honest profession until 1909 when the New York Giants hired a full-time coach named Arlie Latham.

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Evan Longoria chats to batting coach Derek Shelton.
Associated Press

For years, the role wasn't always taken seriously. Baseball historian David Nemec said two Washington Senators coaches during the 1930s also functioned as clowns: They'd perform goofy routines for the crowd. Before World War II, there were generally only two to three coaches per team. As the sport expanded, and as the players began to make more money, the coaching load grew. "The manager had lots of hats to wear," Nemec said. Historians believe the pitching coach came next, followed by the bullpen coach (an extension of the pitching coach) and the bullpen catcher (who warms up pitchers). Batting coaches became standard sometime around the late 1970s, followed by the bench coach, who functions as the manager's chief adviser and confidant.

During the past regular season, all 30 teams used batting, pitching, third base, first base and bullpen coaches. All but the Tigers consistently used a bench coach. Most coaches came up through the minor leagues. Some are fringe figures who never played the game with some are former managers, like Yankees pitching coach Larry Rothschild or Diamondbacks hitting coach Don Baylor. Agents and coaches say salaries range between $150,000 and $700,000.

On a typical day, coaches report to the park around 1 p.m. for a night game. Time can be spent reviewing tape, reading scouting reports and tweaking player mechanics. On some teams, like Detroit and Texas, pitching coaches have become executives of sorts who oversee player development throughout the minor leagues.

Coaches say multitasking is the rule. On the Rays, third-base coach Tom Foley doubles as an infield coach, first-base coach George Hendrick also works with outfielders and bench coach Dave Martinez is involved in planning and organization. In June, when Baltimore Orioles third-base coach John Russell came down with a bum knee, manager Buck Showalter moved bench coach Willie Randolph to third and brought Russell to the bench.

"Very rarely is there anybody not doing something," Yankees bullpen coach Mike Harkey said of that team's hardworking staff. "We do more work off the field than we actually do on the field," said Mets first-base coach Mookie Wilson.

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Coach Don Zimmer.
Associated Press

For the Rays, having extra bodies came in handy this season, Sternberg said. When Bobby Ramos, the bullpen coach, missed time with an illness, Stan Boroski, the assistant to the pitching coach, was able to step in, saving the Rays from having to import an unfamiliar figure.

If fans are a bit skeptical about the rigors of these jobs, it's not hard to see why.

Other than the occasional camera shot of a base coach conferring with a runner, a pitching coach visiting the mound or a bench coach taking over for an ejected manager, these men don't seem to be doing much more than chewing enormous wads of gum.

"It's actually pretty easy," New York Mets bench coach Ken Oberkfell said. "The toughest part is when a manager gets thrown out of the game, and you take over. That's why I tell Terry, 'Don't get thrown out of the game.'"

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